Elínborg was dozing off when she heard a sound. They were all in bed except Valthór, who was still on the computer; she did not know whether he was working on a school assignment, or just chatting or blogging. He would not sleep until the middle of the night. Valthór had his own internal clock: he did not go to bed until the early hours and would lie in until evening, given the chance. This worried Elínborg but she saw little point in discussing it. She had tried many times, but he was obstinate and dogmatic, insisting on his rights.
The Thingholt victim was on Elínborg’s mind all evening. Even if she had wanted to, she could not have described the horrifying scene to her boys: the man’s throat had been cut, and the chairs and tables in the living room had been drenched in blood. The pathologist had not yet made his report.
The police reckoned that the killing had been premeditated. The perpetrator must have come to the victim’s home with the intention of attacking him. There was little sign of a struggle and the actual wound appeared to be a confident slash straight across the throat, at precisely the right point to inflict maximum damage. Smaller cuts on the neck indicated that the blade had been held at the victim’s throat for some time. It looked as if the assault had been sudden and unexpected: there was no damage to the outside door, which might suggest that the victim had let his killer in, while another possibility was that someone who had entered the flat with the man, or had been his guest, had launched the brutal attack without warning. Nothing seemed to have been stolen and there was no sign that the flat had been ransacked.
It was unlikely that the victim had been killed by burglars but he might conceivably have disturbed them before any damage had been done, leading them to panic and attack him.
The body was almost completely drained of blood, much of which had pooled and dried on the floor of the flat. That meant that the man’s heart had continued to beat for a little while after the attack.
After seeing all that gore Elínborg simply could not have cooked a bloody steak, however much her elder son moaned about the dinner menu.
3
The name of the murdered man in Thingholt was Runólfur. He had worked for a telecoms company, had no criminal record, and had never come to the attention of the police. He had moved to Reykjavík from his home village more than ten years ago, and he lived alone. His elderly mother, who was still living in the same village, said he had not been in touch recently. A police officer and the local clergyman went to her home to notify her of her son’s death. Runólfur was an only child, and it transpired that his father had died in an accident some years before: he had collided with a lorry on the upland road over the Holtavörduheidi moor.
Runólfur’s landlord spoke well of him. He always paid his rent on time; he was neat and tidy; there was never any noise from his flat; he went out to work every morning. The landlord could not praise him highly enough.
‘All that blood,’ he said, with a resentful look at Elínborg. ‘I’ll have to get a cleaning company in. I’ll probably have to replace the flooring. Who would do a thing like that? It won’t be easy to find new tenants.’
‘So you’ve never heard anything from the flat?’ Elinborg asked.
‘Not a whisper,’ replied the landlord. He had a protruding belly, a week’s growth of white whiskers, a balding head, sagging shoulders and stubby arms. He lived above Runólfur. He said he had rented out the downstairs flat for years, and Runólfur had been his tenant for the past two years or so. He had discovered the body when he brought down some bills which had been mistakenly delivered to his flat; he pushed them through the letter box, but as he passed the living-room window he had seen the bare feet of someone who was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. He had felt the best thing was to ring the police at once.
‘Were you home on Saturday evening?’ asked Elínborg. She pictured the inquisitive landlord peering into the flat. It couldn’t have been easy to see in. The curtains were drawn, with only a narrow gap between them.
Preliminary investigations indicated that the murder had been committed either on the Saturday evening or during the night. It seemed more likely that someone had been in the flat with Runólfur before the attack occurred than that anyone had forced entry. The odds were on a woman. It looked as if Runólfur had had sex shortly before he died, as a condom had been found on the bedroom floor. The T-shirt he was wearing when he was discovered probably did not belong to him but to a woman. It was far too small for him, and in addition dark hairs were found on it, matching hairs collected from Runólfur’s sofa. There was a hair on his jacket, possibly from the same person, and in his bed, in a bedroom off the living room, there were pubic hairs. He might have invited a woman to stay the night.
It would have been easy to leave the house through the garden and climb over into an adjacent garden behind a three-storey concrete house in the next street. Nobody had been seen in the garden two days ago.
‘I’m at home most days,’ said the landlord.
‘You say Runólfur went out that evening?’
‘Yes, I saw him walk off down the street. It must have been about eleven. I didn’t see him after that.’
‘You didn’t notice when he came home?’
‘No. I was probably asleep by then.’
‘So you don’t know if anyone came back with him?’
‘No.’
‘Runólfur didn’t live with a woman, did he?’
‘No, nor with a man,’ the landlord replied, with an enigmatic smile.
‘Not at any time while he was your tenant?’
‘No.’
‘But do you know if he had girlfriends who stayed over?’ The landlord scratched his head. It was shortly past lunchtime; he had just finished eating horsemeat sausage, and now he was sitting calmly on a sofa opposite Elínborg. She had spotted the leftovers on a plate in the kitchen; a rancid smell hung in the air and she hoped the odour would not taint her coat, a recent sale bargain. She had no desire to stay here any longer than necessary.
‘Not particularly,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t think I ever saw him with a woman. Not as far as I remember.’
‘You didn’t know him all that well?’
‘No. I soon realised he wanted to be left alone. So … No, I didn’t have much to do with him.’
Elínborg stood up. She saw Sigurdur Óli at the door of the house across the road, talking to the neighbours. Other police officers were taking statements from local residents.
‘When can I hose down the flat?’ asked the landlord.
‘Soon,’ answered Elínborg. ‘We’ll let you know.’
Runólfur’s body had been removed the previous evening, but when Elínborg arrived with Sigurdur Óli, the morning after the discovery of the body, forensics officers were still at work in the flat. The evidence was that this was the home of a neat young man, who had wanted to make a pleasant, comfortable base for himself.
Elínborg had the impression that the fittings had been carefully selected. They included porcelain wall-plaques — not a common sight in a young person’s home — a beautiful rug on the parquet floor, a sofa and a matching easy chair. The bathroom was small but tasteful. In the bedroom was a double bed. The kitchen, adjoining the living room, was spotless. There were no books and no family photographs, only a huge flatscreen TV and three framed posters of superheroes: Spider-Man, Superman and Batman. High-quality collectible superhero figures were displayed on a table.